HEAVEN'S GATE TEXTS

On March 22, 1997, almost the entire body of adherents to
Heaven's Gate committed near-simultaneous suicide.
They died in their mansion in a California suburb outside of San Diego
by voluntarily ingesting large amounts of painkillers in applesauce.
The last two left suffocated themselves.
Heaven's Gate left behind 39 corpses and extensive documentation as to their
beliefs--that they were disembodied extraterrestrials waiting for
a mothership to take them home and the planet Earth was about to be 'recycled'.
Their practices included communal living, taking new names ending in 'ody',
and mortification of the body (particularly abstention from sex
and intoxicants, close cropped hair, unisex outfits and male castration).

Why did this
small and 'mostly harmless' group
end up becoming one of the most famous mass suicides in US history?
They had a history of millennial predictions
(it was the late 90s, after all) and media stunts.
Like many inward-facing spiritual groups,
they lived simple lives in an authoritarian commune.
On multiple occasions, their leader 'Do' had predicted that
they would be picked up by a UFO, and each time they had been disappointed.
When a photo of comet Hale-Bopp with some background stars
was interpreted by the UFO underground as having an
accompanying spaceship in it, this opportunity
seemed too good to miss by the Heaven's Gate adherents.

'Mission Patch'

This group is worth studying, if only because it is one of those
rare opportunities to view the evolution of a belief system before it
had a chance to start revising its own early history.
We have a large volume of unedited documents
from the earliest to the final days of Heaven's Gate,
transcribed by the group's adherents in electronic form.
They never got to the difficult stage that most religions go through
when faced with having to sort out (and edit) their early texts.
Of course, this is due to the fact that the group didn't believe in procreation
and ended up self-destructing in a spectacular fashion.

Why include this material at this site?
We certainly don't condone their tragic mass suicide.
It is painful to watch these people, all of whom
had families and potential futures, talk themselves
into believing that it was completely rational to commit suicide.
Of course, this is not the first time this has happened
in the name of religion; for instance, the founder of Jainism
starved himself to death.
However, while this site's 'prime directive' is religious tolerance,
we also believe in people making informed choices
when it comes to matters of belief.
It is worth noting that there are many similar groups out there,
and perhaps looking at this particular example may help
keep someone else from stepping into the void.

Note on copyrights.
These materials, in particular the Anthology, are covered by copyrights.
By explicit release, they are available for
unaltered, non-commercial reproduction.
How to obtain commercial clearance for these texts is unknown and
sacred-texts can't assist in this.